In a break from our regular programming, may I direct you over to the SEAWL home-page where you’ll find my recent contribution discussing the pathological need Expat Aid Workers have to one-up each other on exotic travel tales…

With all this talk about t-shirts going on, a friend of mine sent me a link to this article discussing the distribution of Superbowl t-shirts. The anecdotes about inappropriate t-shirt messages brought a definite giggle- hesitation about human dignity aside:

Those wearing the tees are either unaware of or unconcerned by the meaning of the English messages they bear. It’s not uncommon to see a man wearing a T-shirt boasting ‘World’s Best Grandma,’ or a young girl wearing a shirt lamenting ‘Stripping ruined my life.’ I’ve seen an old woman in ‘I Love AC/DC,’ an indigenous grandmother with a shirt bragging, “My boyfriend is hotter than yours,” and another disclosing that ‘My boyfriend is out of town.’

Sometimes, the message can be downright subversive. Once in Costa Rica, a friend and I were waiting for a bus when a group of tough-looking teenagers approached and gave us a hard look. But the leader of the pack was wearing a T-shirt that read: ‘I’m not a bitch, I just suffer from permanent PMS.’ I didn’t know whether to hand him my wallet or a Motrin.

They also reminded me of another story.

Some years ago I was travelling independantly in West Africa, and towards the end of my journey had to hitch a ride in a vegetable van from Mauritania into Morocco-governed Western Sahara. The border crossing from the Mauritanian side was a ways into the desert wasteland from Nouadhibou, itself one of the most derelict little outposts I’ve ever had the misfortune of travelling through. The squalor of urban Mauritania is matched by few other places I’ve spent time.

The border crossing was little more than a hut at the edge of a vehicle track in the dirt. Some bored and seedy-looking guards checked passports for a while, and the few travellers (mostly local transporters) loitered around their vehicles, taking the chance for a leg-stretch. The northward route was less plied than the southbound, and compared to the Moroccans who (we were later to learn) maintained a large built-up and well-run complex on their side of no-man’s land, was downright shoddy.

No-man’s land itself was a stretch of desert that took the better part of an hour to navigate, and was laid with landmines. We were advised to find drivers who ply the route regularly. Travelers in their own four-wheel drivers have been killed hitting mines.

My companions and I, already uncomfortable from the travel atop pungent wooden crates, dismounted from the cramped van while we waited for permission to leave Mauritania. It was characteristically hot, the sky scorched white and featureless, and the landscape dull and gravelly. Quiet. Wind-tussled. Not much activity. Sergio Leone would have liked it.

Beside the guard’s shack loitered a scruffy local man. Maybe forty-five, scrawny, with wiry hair and teeth that jutted out, he was grinning and chatting, smoking a cigarette and engaging with anybody who came past. I assume he was either related to one of the guards, or simply too much trouble to send away again. But as an ambassador welcoming people to the conservative Islamic Republic of Mauritania, he couldn’t have been more incongrously suited. Looking him up and down, we all shared a quiet smirk, for the lettering emblazoned on his bright yellow t-shirt enquired confidently of travellers, “Fancy a Quickie?”

Portraiture is something I’ve increasingly aspired to as a photographer. I love a good landscape- in fact, my landscape shots are often what people seem to enjoy in my shots. Portraiture is a different skill-set though. While light changes over a landscape in such a way that you may only have a few minutes to get the shot you want, the challenge of portraiture is even greater- you may have just fractions of a second to capture the image that you have in your mind’s eye. On top of that, a really good portrait often communicates far more power and emotion to the viewer than any landscape; it’s the human element that makes it special.

The basic rules all apply, of course. You want to think about composition (the rule of thirds is a pretty reliable starting point), colour (one of the joys of travel photography are the different colour palettes you can find in both the natural and urban environments) and lighting (shooting in the tropics presents visceral challenges with regards to fierce overhead lighting, washed-out skies and high-contrast backdrops, but dust and moisture can enrich late afternoon sunlight to make it magical).

I’m sharing some specific pointers I’d like to suggest for taking a decent travel photograph. They’re not exhaustive, nor are they unique to travel portraiture, but I reckon if you can nail these, you’re well on your way to capturing the sort of image you’ll want to bring home and share with friends and family when your adventures come to a temporary halt. (I’ll leave it to you guys to decide whether these shots fit the title or not…)

Note: All these photos were taken on a 3-day field visit in rural Niger in September this year.

1. Create a Connection

This is true with any portrait. I find the most powerful portraits are those where the subject is looking straight down the camera lens. It can feel (as a viewer) as though the person is looking straight out of the photograph at you. To achieve this, you generally need some sort of relationship with the person whose picture you’re taking. It might only be a momentary one- a glance in the street- or you may have asked the person to pose for you.

In travel photography you’re often communicating across language barriers, but respect is universal, so always put it into action. Just pulling out a camera and shooting willy-nilly is a sure way to upset people. I rarely take a photo where I haven’t signalled my camera (usually pointed upwards) and waited for an inviting smile or nod, or made eye-contact with the person and waited for them to acknowledge me in some way. If I sense hesitation or hostility, I smile and move on. Even asking in a foreign language, people usually get the idea of what you’re wanting and can communicate a reply.

While in photojournalism there’s a power and pathos that comes with shots of human suffering or deep emotion, I find the photos that people go back to tend to be ones where the subject is joyful. People are naturally drawn to beauty. With that in mind, have fun. Laugh with the person you’re shooting, give them a big smile, turn it into a game. That won’t work in all cultures: for many, having a photo taken is a serious business and they want to look their formal best. Kids, on the other hand, usually love it, and in many African countries they’re overjoyed when someone points a lens at them.

Earlier I’d asked this girl if I could take her picture, to which she’d agreed, and I got a really sweet little shot of her smiling shyly while clinging to the trunk of a tree. A few minutes later she came back to me with a cheeky smirk asking me if I’d take another photo, and when I raised my camera she giggled. I speak no Hausa and she spoke no French, but as you can see, the communication worked just fine.

2. Consider your Background

When you’re taking a portrait, the person is your main point of focus, but they exist in a context. In fact this is the major difference between travel (and candid) portraiture versus studio portraiture. With the latter, you control the background ahead of time. With the former, you need to manage it on the fly- itself a challenge that can be both satisfying and heart-breaking.

Background can become a part of your visual narrative, or it can distract from it, so think about the effect you want. Environmental portraits frame people in a shot with items that contribute to telling that person’s story. A merchant in a fruit stall, for example, may be best photographed standing with all her colourful pineapples sharply in focus. For this you probably want to use a wider-angle lens (not too wide, as wide angles distort images and can stretch facial features unnaturally) and a reasonably small aperture (f/8 and higher, light-depending). Again, the joy of travel portraiture is that backgrounds are often exotic and full of interest.

On the other hand, a child on a busy street may get lost in the clutter if you don’t defocus your background. Use a mid-range telephoto lens and open the aperture wide to get a really shallow depth of field, which naturally throws the background out of focus. Just make sure your point of focus is spot-on, or you may end up with a fuzzy subject too.

If the background is unremarkable you probably want to use this technique too. In the photo at the top of this page, the background was burning white sand- totally uninteresting and threatening to wash out the photo- so blurring it into white made the most sense. This has advantages (declutter and an element of the abstract) but also disadvantages (the photo is placeless and has no context).

In this first photo, I chose to use a really shallow depth of field as the background was fairly dull, and I wanted the farmer to stand out. Using a small f-stop number (f/1.8) also means that the part of the shot that is in focus is REALLY sharp. The blurred green trees give just enough information to let you know you’re in the countryside, but don’t pull the eye away from the man’s wrinkled face.

In this next shot, the girl is standing against the wall, so both she and the wall are in focus. The wall is painted with a map of Africa. Although the girl herself doesn’t stand out quite so much from the background, the colours and textures are pleasing to the eye, and the map itself tells a story and gives the girl a context which (in my opinion) adds something unique to the photograph that might have been lost had she been against an empty or blurred background.

In this third shot, the boy is in focus while everything forward of and beyond him starts to blur out. There’s just enough detail, however, to give him a context- the cows, the harness and the water containers, as well as the rural backdrop. Because he alone is in focus he still holds the viewer’s eye, but there are other elements in the image that contribute to telling the viewer something about who he is and what he does. Note: You could argue that this photo would have benefitted from a broader depth-of-field (something around f/4) to keep the cows sharp but still blur the background, and I’d accept that criticism, although I also like how isolated the boy is from everything around him; you can see just how precise the depth is by looking at how much of the yoke, front-to-back, is actually in focus before it blurs out.

3. Be Ready for the Right Moment

Facial expressions are fleeting, as are connections. If you’re in a place where you think you might see something interesting, have your camera out and switched on, with the right lens fitted, the correct mode selected, and your eyes scanning. You might be looking for a gesture, an emotion, or a fleeting glimpse of eye-contact. People may be moving. Think about your shutter-speed- will you be able to freeze motion given the light available to you? And think too about point number one and the importance of communication and respect; even in a crowded place, have you made eye-contact with the people you’re wanting to photograph, or made sure they’re comfortable with the camera? Stand-off lenses are all very well, but as a photographer you need to be asking yourself these ethical questions.

In both of these photos, these kids made eye-contact with me for just a few seconds where they were caught in a crowd of others. The children there had been watching me for some while and I’d been looking back at them and smiling, and noting those that smiled back at me and at the camera. I already had the aperture opened up so that when my opportunity came I knew I’d be able to isolate whichever children gave me a moment to photograph, and these two did.

4. Go for the Eyes

If there’s a cardinal rule in portrait photography, it’s this one. Eyes are all about moment and connection. They communicate emotion to the viewer, and a simple glance of a couple of degrees off-lens can make the difference between a missed opportunity and a wow moment. This is particularly true of close-ups.

For eyes, think about placement; rule of thirds is usually the way forwards here, so try and get one eye onto that sweet-spot at the intersection of the thirds-lines. An eye-line straight down the barrel is usually what I go for, and almost all of the portraits I’ve loved have involved that sort of eye contact. If using shallow depth of field, ensure that the eye itself is the point of focus. It’s all too easy to accidentally focus on the forehead or the tip of the nose, and even with a really strong facial expression, you’ll lose some of the punch of the image.

These two shots were both taken at a school in Niger (one inside the classroom and one outside), and they are both among some of my favourite portraits of all time.

5. Tell a Story

This is optional, but the difference between a techncially good photo, and a photo which makes people sit up and take notice, is that with the latter, they’re experiencing something new. The beauty of travel photography is that there’s always a story to be told, something new to see, something that’s exotic to the viewer back home, so try and think of what that story might be. A facet of daily life, a curious setting, some exotic produce, or just an unusual face that communicates a sense of place or time- it can be any number of things. Put this together with capturing the right moment and working on your background, and you’ll have a photograph that will really help you remember a place.

In this photo, I managed to combine moment, background, eye-contact and connection, and the setting was such that I’ve been able to capture a little slice of existence in this rural African village. Girls in Niger, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, are the ones mostly tasked with collecting water- even quite young girls like this one. Here, I love the colour, the bright light, her expression, and the pouring of the water all framed crisply against a blurred backdrop of other women and girls waiting at the well behind her (and again, contrast this with the image at the top of the page which has no background).

Travel photography- and portraiture- is a personal thing, and it’s up to you as the photographer to decide what you want to remember, and how. Really, if you take a photo, and it reminds you of something special, and you’re proud of it, that’s all that matters. I wish you all the best of luck out there, and most of all, I encourage you to have fun. If you’re not enjoying yourself with you camera, seriously, what’s the point?

In true Global Nomad style, friend Mads, who is currently spending 9 months travelling around Latin America, managed to show up in Antigua the same week I was there, so we took a little time to wander round the town with our cameras. Random meandering brought us through the local market and to the bus depot. While hardly a premier tourist destination in itself (save for those entering and exiting the town via public bus), the combination of dark skies, shoddy foreground, and bright colours on the bodies of the buses themselves, all made for a creative and alternative photographic diversion.

It’s fun to see how buses get treated in different parts of the world. Highly functional in the west, in poorer countries they are a capital investment of the highest order for middle-sized businessmen, and can be highly lucrative once a service and line can be well established. They are both a source of blessing (income), and a magnet for all kinds of superstition and fear given their propensity to crash in many of these places, with high fatality rates associated.

My first real exposure to the world of colourful buses was in Nairobi in 2001. Their minibuses are called ‘Matatus’ (a derivative of the kiswahili word for ‘three’- ‘tatu’- after the original cost of a fare, three shillings. Tatu itself has its roots in the Arabic word for three, ‘thalaatha’, Kiswahili being a trade language derived from a mix of Arabic and the traditional Bantu group of languages spoken along the east African coastline). Matatus were a gloriously offensive expression of Kenyan street culture- painted in gaudy hues, airbrushed densely enough that the chassis could rust away and the thing would still hold together, and with a sound-system that ensured you didn’t just hear the Matatus coming, you actually felt them.

As in most places in the developing world, the fact that the Matatus were primarily Nissan and Toyota minivans didn’t stop their conductors cramming sixteen or eighteen people inside as a matter of course- four to a row, hips jammed together in the dense, sweaty interior, produce and babies and all, while the subwoofer vibrated your ribcage with an intensity that could pop a chicken’s skull. Competition for routes was severe- at times leading to violent confrontation- and negotiating the roads near a bus-stop was always a gauntlet to run. Driving was horrendous, however. The drivers were ramped on miraa (the local variant of the herbal chew khat, that comes over by the truckload from Somalia), helping them stay awake despite fatigue, and creating a false sense of invincibility that would have them overtaking at high speed on blind corners, with routinely predictable results.

With soaring fatalities, the new Kenyan government under Kibaki pushed through a set of gutsy reforms a few years after I was there, forcing the industry to be regulated. Routes were formalized, paint-jobs were replaced with a ubiquitous yellow stripe, sound-systems were limited to certain decibels, and speed-governors were installed on motors. This was, ultimately, a good thing, as the number of lives lost to reckless driving fell substantially. However I have to say that in my opinion, a little of the soul of Nairobi was also stripped away in the process, and in a city that needs all the help it can get to present a positive face, I felt it lost a little.

Kenya’s not alone in the colourful bus stakes however. Juddering through Colombo’s steamy streets during last year’s monsoon in two-stroke tuk-tuks, I can vividly recall the searing stench of diesel exhaust from the oversized, windowless Lanka Ashok Leyland buses, with hyper-real murals airbrushed front, back and sides. Sitting in the passenger seat of the rickshaw, my head would barely reach the top of the rear tyre of the beasts while the enourmous engine rattled behind its panels just inches from my ear in the claustrophobic rush-hour. Peering up at rows of resigned brown faces peering back down at me, I occasionally wondered whether the driver even knew we were down there, worrying at what was keeping us from being turned into a thin slick sheet of crushed aluminium.

For an altogether different approach to public buses, the Jeepneys of the Philippines are hard to go past. Like the bastard child of a 1940s army jeep and a decrepit stretched limo, these ply the streets of Manila in airbrushed hordes. Images of Hollywood starlets, soaring eagles, or religious montages cry out for attention off the sides of the awkward vehicles, rows of people crammed inside in the dense heat. The windowless sides provide what little circulation can be created in the crawling metropolis traffic, a mixed blessing in air so polluted you can pretty much see it.

Almost certainly my favourite to look at, however, are the trucks and, specifically, buses of Pakistan. Taking frivolous decoration to new heights of sheer gaudiness, the transports are wrapped in fabrics, mirrors, tassles and shiny things in all manner of colours and styles. Fringes hang from windshields until they seem to obscure the view. Swirling hues scream from the chassis to be noticed. Airhorns, seeming ripped from oil supertankers, announce the arrival and imminent departure of services. Loud Sindhi music blares from speakers while Urdu variants of Bollywood cinema flashes across a tiny television screen mounted at the front of the aisle. They are truly marvellous creatures to watch coming down the road- and if I ever make it back to Pakistan with my camera I’ll do my best to capture some.

For now, however, this series of photos are all from the jaunt through the Antigua bus depot, and I’ll have to leave your imagination to fill in the images that I can only suggest with words. But I thoroughly enjoyed this shoot, and a chance to explore a little of another nation’s culture, as expressed through the medium of public transport.

*So this clearly isn’t a bus. But it kind of fit into the vehicular category I’ve been exploring. And I liked the angle and curves on this old VW Beetle that was parked at an Antigua roadside. The Spanish word for car, ‘coche’ is actually from the same place we get for the English ‘coach’, synonymous with bus, so it kind of works. A hark back to the day when the word ‘coach’ refered to a range of horse-drawn carriages which early automobiles mirrored in form and function.

**Mads in Antigua, with a colourful fairground stall as a backdrop. The fairground backed right onto the bus depot (see the ferris wheel in one of the earlier shots above) and was colourful and in use, but very run down.

One of the things I like about Melbourne is that it’s a creative, artsy sort of city. There’s always lots on, and in the city centre there’s lots of space given over to different displays of creativity. Love it or hate it, the highly acclaimed, debated and controversial Federation Square, smack in the heart of the CBD, is a perfect case in point, with its jagged, almost broken architectural lines, post-modern functionality, and use of both open and closed space to house and promote artistic expression. Love it or hate it, it makes a statement.

One of the things I like about being a photographer is being able to grab my gear, go for a walk, and explore different aspects of the visual world we live in. On Sunday I was inspired to explore the colour and character of a little of this creativity that Melbourne exudes. Not by design; it just happened that way. Went for a walk, found some colour, and started snapping.

This installation is on the north bank of the Yarra a five minute walk from Federation Pier. I’ve no idea what it is. In all honesty (and I share my opinion as a non-artist, and one who has little knowledge or appreciation for contemporary sculpture) I think it’s quite hideous, both the structure itself and the detailing on it. Not to disrespect the work that goes into it or the vision that others (the artist included) clearly had. However, what I do love about it is the splash of colour and the way its smooth round forms contrast with the angled skyline of central Melbourne. The almost artificial lighting that appears here is actually a result of the feathery clouds that drifted over the city, causing some areas to be strongly lit and others to be more softly illuminated.

Just behind this amorphous blob is a large ferris wheel. It’s no competitor for the London Eye (although there is one such folly currently being deconstructed in Melbourne’s docklands), but it’s a cute, colourful little thing, and against the cloudy sky the cool weekend delivered, I enjoyed the shapes and contrast as they appeared through the viewfinder.

Around the back of Fed Square I found this cute little block of land, aptly named the Urban Garden. Its purpose and presence speaks for itself, but I again enjoyed the combination of colour contrasts, and the notion of the ‘soft space’ of the grass being compared with the ‘hard space’ of the paved square (at the top of the steps at back). In true postmodern style, the designer has juxtaposed hard lines (the cube-like green squares on the grass) with the soft context to further confuse our notions of green space in the city. Or at least that’s my Geographer’s read of it. Like most of what I write, it’s perfectly possible I’m just making it all up.

Fed Square itself is a curious tangle of creative lines that serve no great purpose other than to entertain the eye and usurp an assumed sense of architectural value. While the corrugated tin roof here harks back to the ubiquitous and utilitarian functionality of galvanized roof sheeting that is found across rural and suburban Australia, it is equally as superfluous here as the jumble of ‘support’ beams, and is more a playful nod to Australia’s architectural traditions in the midst of a contemporary installation. Hard to photograph well, I thoroughly enjoy the flight of imagination that went into creating Federation Square, and personally thinks it adds reams to Australia’s cultural capital and the flavour of the city centre.

As a Kiwi it’s pretty hard for me to get too teary about Australia Day. Don’t get me wrong. I love an excuse for a good barbie and a few cold ones on a summer’s afternoon with mates in the back yard. And Australia has been a good home-base for me these past seven years (on and off). I’ve made some spectacular friends, think Melbourne’s a brilliant city to live in, and have a lot of fond memories of being here.

None the less, hailing from Aotearoa, I can’t help recalling my heritage which insists that I support just two teams: New Zealand, and anybody playing Australia.

However, in the vein of good sportsmanship (and let’s face it, for all the cross-Tasman vibes, we’re all good sports about it) I share the following clip which a friend of mine passed on to me some months ago and which came back to mind last night. If you’re an Australian, or just happen to know one, I hope you find this video as amusing as I do.

Happy Australia Day!

Tris

Notes:

1. This clip is actually taken from an Australian TV series called the Gruen Transfer, which uses creative panels to produce entertaining material to support and demonstrate theory and practice in advertising and marketing. The second clip (my favourite) is actually a spoof of a well-known New Zealand tourism commercial.

2. [Nerd Alert] If you pause the clip at 1:03, where the text says “0% Infantry” and shows a man walking in the mountains, that clip is in fact not shot in New Zealand, but shot in the Annapurna Sanctuary in Nepal. The mountain is Annapurna South, and if you don’t believe me, check out the second photo on my profile page and compare the mountain behind me with the mountain on the screen.

About a year ago now (how time flies) I spent three weeks vacation in South East Asia. A few days I spent down on Railay Beach, in southern Thailand. I love Thailand- the beautiful lushness of the landscape, the warmth and courtesy of its people, the intense balance of flavours in its cuisine, and the clashing diversity of life in its capital Bangkok.

The scenery around Ao Nang is spectacular. Railay is a peninsula but inaccessible from the mainland except by powered longtail boat, courtesy of a series of steep karst limestone hills hundreds of feet high which plunge with dramatic certainty straight down into the warm lapping seas. A mecca for climbers the world over, vast rockfaces hang above green-blue water, dripping with stalagtites. Tiny outcropping islands- made famous by and subsequently epynomous with James Bond following the release of The Man With the Golden Gun– stand like abandoned collonades amidst the currents, pocked with caves and begging exploration.

This was my second trip to the south of Thailand, but my first to the western side of Thailand’s south. My first trip, back in 2002, took me to Koh Samet, a little further off the farang cattle track and frequented by Thais on weekend trips from Bangkok. Koh Samet was overall a pleasant experience, during which I lived in a tree-house for five dollars a night. The island was laid back and relaxing, and the low point was being vomitted on by a kitten which had decided to share my mattress one night at four a.m.

Amazingly I showed enough self-control not to hurl said kitten from the tree-house.

I was less enchanted by Railay Beach and Ao Nang. While the landscape was far more beautiful on the whole, the establishment of western tourism has left an ugly scar- not just in the hordes of blotchy white westerners who throng on the beaches, but in the attitudes of the Thais themselves. In vast contrast to the courteous attitude you find in Bangkok, or the warmth and generosity you find in the north, I found the people I ran into around Ao Nang to be brusque, uninterested and generally lacking in any charm, typified by the bellboy who tried to sell me weed within two minutes of my arriving at our hotel.

However getting away from the crowds and onto the water (‘away’ assuming you could avoid being run down by a longtail), you could find some space to enjoy the landscape, so one morning Pam, Lori and I grabbed some kayaks and took ourselves for a paddle up the coast. We weren’t by any stretch of the imagination the only ones doing so, but it was nice to get intimate with the cliffs and caves of the little islands, and enjoy a slightly different vibe. The scenery was magnificent even if the light didn’t lend itself to photography (a little on the contrasty side with the reflections on the sea), and to see how Railay looks in more dramatic light, you’ll have to click here.

All up, I wouldn’t go back to the southern beaches unless I happened to be in-country for something else and some friends were going down for a few days. While you’d be hard-pressed to find more exciting beachside scenery, the vibe and over-the-top tourist presence left me feeling a little flat. Compared to the peaceful hill-country around Chiang Rai, the frenetic pace and colours of Bangkok or the chilled-out stylings of Mae Hong Son, Ao Nang was a damp squib, and I think Thailand- and indeed South East Asia- has far more to offer than this particular corner of the peninsula.